NEW YORK (AP) — Four gay men accused a New Jersey organization of fraud Tuesday for selling "conversion therapy" with false promises to make them straight.

They said during a Manhattan news conference that they were subjected to humiliations that included stripping naked and taking a baseball bat to effigies of their mothers.

The four attended sessions at the Jersey City, N.J.-based Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing, or JONAH. The nonprofit advertises in Jewish publications and claims to rid men of same-sex attractions.

- snip -

The four say the methods do not work and should not be marketed under New Jersey's consumer protection laws. JONAH did not return calls requesting comment.

POST EXCLUSIVE EARLY VOTING CONTROVERSY
Former Florida GOP leaders say voter suppression was reason they pushed new election law

Former GOP chair, governor - both on outs with party - say voter fraud wasn’t a concern, but reducing Democratic votes was.

By Dara Kam, John Lantigua

Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau

A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.

Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.

Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.

“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.

KRUGMAN: This Is The Chart That Debunks What Everyone Says About The National Debt

Joe Weisenthal | Nov. 25, 2012, 11:05 AM | 18,672 | 64

Paul Krugman posts a simple chart that makes a profound point.

It compares the yield on UK debt vs. US debt.

What should stand out for you, instantly, is that the two countries borrow at virtually identical rates, and have for years.

What this should show to people is that much of the popular stories that people tell about sovereign debt is a myth.

Countries that borrow in their own currencies and can "print" at will don't have default risk, so their borrowing costs are an expression of expectations of future interest rates and growth. The US has been notably profligate since the crisis. The UK (under Cameron) has been prematurely austere. The upshot: it hasn't mattered much on the yield front.

But won’t that money printing cause inflation? Not as long as the economy remains depressed. Budget deficits could lead people to expect higher inflation down the road, once the slump finally ends — but that would be a good thing for the economy in the short run, discouraging people from sitting on cash and weakening the exchange rate, thereby making exports more competitive.

The point, then, is that the whole “credibility” argument is incoherent.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a plea from the Cook County state's attorney to allow enforcement of a law prohibiting people from recording police officers on the job.

The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that found that the state's anti-eavesdropping law violates free speech rights when used against people who tape law enforcement officers.

- snip -

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in 2010 against State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to block prosecution of ACLU staff for recording police officers performing their duties in public places, one of the group's long-standing monitoring missions.

Opponents of the law say the right to record police is vital to guard against abuses.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has revived a Christian college's challenge to President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul, with the acquiescence of the Obama administration.

The court on Monday ordered the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to consider the claim by Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., that Obama's health care law violates the school's religious freedoms.

A federal district judge rejected Liberty's claims, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the lawsuit was premature and never dealt with the substance of the school's arguments. The Supreme Court upheld the health care law in June.

The justices used lawsuits filed by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business to uphold the health care law by a 5-4 vote, then rejected all other pending appeals, including Liberty's.

"This is actually happening now," says Geraint Tarling of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK. He and colleagues captured free-swimming sea snails called pteropods from the Southern Ocean in early 2008 and found under an electron microscope that the outer layers of their hard shells bore signs of unusual corrosion.

As well as warming the planet, the carbon dioxide we emit is changing the chemistry of the ocean. CO2 dissolves in water to form carbonic acid, making the water less alkaline. The pH is currently dropping at about 0.1 per century, faster than any time in the last 300 million years.

Lab experiments have shown that organisms with hard shells, such as corals and molluscs, will suffer as a result. To build their shells, corals and molluscs need to take up calcium carbonate from the water, but more carbonic acid means more hydrogen ions in the water. These react with carbonate ions, making them unavailable to form calcium carbonate.

Aragonite shortage

The most vulnerable animals are those, like pteropods, that build their shells entirely from aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate that is very sensitive to extra acidity. By 2050, there will be a severe shortage of aragonite in much of the ocean.

(Reuters) - A suspected shoplifter died in Georgia on Sunday after a confrontation with two Walmart employees and a contract security guard who caught him in the store's parking lot, local media reported.

Police said the man stole two DVD players from a Walmart in Lithonia, southeast of Atlanta, before he walked out the front door and was apprehended by the workers, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper reported in a story on its website.

The three workers were on top of the man when police arrived, and officers found him unresponsive and bleeding from his mouth and nose, the newspaper said.

The man was taken to a local hospital, where he was declared dead. He appeared to have been put in a choke hold by the security officer, the paper reported.

Dowd said on ABC’s This Week that every member of Congress knew — but refused to admit — that the federal deficit could only be lowered by raising tax rates on the wealthy, cutting defense spending and reforming entitlement programs like Medicare.

“And they also all know that Grover Norquist is an impediment to good governing,” he added. “The only good thing about Grover Norquist is he’s named after a character from Sesame Street.”

Nearly every Republican member of Congress has signed Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform pledge, vowing to oppose tax increases under any circumstance.

After the 12-member congressional “super committee” failed to create a federal budget to cut U.S. deficits by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years, Democratic Sen. John Kerry (MA) complained that Norquist was the committee’s thirteenth member. The super committee was tasked with averting the upcoming fiscal cliff, but Democrats said Republicans refused to compromise on raising government revenue.